Percentile Dice

[Tinker Gnome]

Okay, IMC, when travelling I have the PCs roll percentile dice about twice a day for random encounters. Now I usually dont use the random encounter tables from the DMG and instead have to make something up, my players seem to love rolling percentile, so I am not going to stop doing it. I just need to find some way to come up with crap other than combat encounters.

Anyone that can help me?

 

[Crothian]

Just have encounters with NPCs like a traveling circus or a merchant carvan. Perhaps a group of pilgrims seeking a tempole or the remains of a carvan lost, hungry after being raided.

 

[Festivus]

There was an article in a recent Dungeon magazine about random encounters on the road. Stuff like a group of travelling merchants who might be persuaded to stop and sell you stuff, a military patrol looking for anything unusual, carts laden with produce for the nearby city/village/town being pulled by oxen, etc.

 

[werk]

Just ask yourself, "Who lives here?" Who do you think the party would bump into travelling through the area. It doesn't have to be especially memorable, it's just something to break up the monotony of travel.
When I moved to Texas, we passed a LIVE FISH truck like 5 times. To this day, that's the only thing we remember about that trip.

My standard are farmers and hunters, but nothing messes with a party more than telling them they see a possible foe that doesn't want to fight.

A dragon passing overhead, or a drow that notices the party, then vanishes into the forest. A long-beard wizard that ports in, looks around confused, hrrumphs, then ports out again.
I especially like to use either overpowering and underpowered foes for this, so a low level party would see the above, but a mid level party may stumble across a goblin that runs away when he sees the party approaching or a displacer beast that abandons a kill.

Not everything out there is as bloodthirsty as PCs.